The Bookworm Beat — The Illustrated Edition (and Open Thread)

I’m very excited, because I’m meeting for lunch today with an old friend whom I haven’t seen in about 25 years. He was a lovely human being when I knew him way back when, and I’m assuming that he hasn’t changed in this regard. What will be new will be to hear about his career and his family life.

I hope to get some substantive links up before I head out to the lunch, but until then, Caped Crusader sent me a huge collection of wonderful political posters, so I thought I’d share them with you right away:

Which you won’t. Because Nixon, for all his flaws, was an adult, and Obama is not.

JKB

Well, this seems to fit with Sadie’s Nixon comment. Seems all this wondrous notion that the media uncovered Watergate is urban legend-ish. The subject was broken back in 1974 but I guess it got overrun. But the intervening years have reveal this column to be true

Now a corollary to the above is Have the DemProgs been successful in subverting the federal investigators. Or, and here is my hope, is it that they’ve just got the AG and some DOJ prosecutors, who will be out the door in a Party change at which time, the investigators will send their cases to legit federal prosecutors. Not the best scenario like happened with Nixon but one that at least gives us hope of returning to the rule of law.

SADIE

JKB, thanks for the companion piece via Commentary. It jarred my memory enough to think of Alexander Butterfield …one of the “aha” moments.

I wished I shared half of your optimism returning to the rule of law. I don’t. And I don’t see the conservative side of the aisle making headlines or rattling the cage either. The frat boys and gals are on summer break. I spent part of the afternoon with a friend talking weighty matters and we’re both stumped as to what it would take to rally ’round the flag. Short of an electrical grid going down, which would effect millions simultaneously, I can’t think of another event.

Biscuit

To be clear:
The Belgian train was vandalized. The train company is going to paint over the flag.

Not saying that Belgium isn’t hideously pro-terrorist. I’m from the Netherlands myself and opnions and reporting on Gaza here have all been following Hamas’ lead. Amazing how intelligent people can adore themselves for their intellect and moral standing while willfully swallowing lies and rooting for genocidal terrorists.

Belgium is even worse because is has a catholic background and therefore far fewer evangelical protestants – the only firm base of support for Israel in the Netherlands. In addition their liberal party right of centre is far more euro-centric than its Dutch counterpart. And they seem to be having even more radical muslim immigrant offspring.

I’ve done both. First with a technical degree; later with a more liberal degree. I went to trade school after my first degree because there was a recession, and that’s where the jobs were. Rather than hide out in grad school, I learned a trade that would afford me a living, and complemented my interests. This opened professional doors later, because I knew which end of a wrench to hold.

Unlike the educational and political elite, I’ve never seen the trades as demeaning. Indeed, a skilled tradesman must be as facile with their mind as well as their hands. There is a lot of satisfaction in pointing out to people (like your kids): I built that.

I’ve done design and I’ve screwed the parts together. One’s not better than the other; it just provides satisfaction in different ways.

Milton Friedman

Well, I’m not so sure.

Manhattan Project. Whatever you think of nuclear weapons, the invention of a practical form of nuclear fission in a relatively small package couldn’t have been done by individuals. Stripped of their moral connotations, nuclear weapons are a significant achievement.

NASA. Should need no further exposition.

Interstate Highway System. Driven on it lately?

Let us not throw the child out with the grey water.

JKB

Government can be good at management. They can do the incremental as long as the target doesn’t move. The projects you list are the incremental.

However, not even the universities are good at the truly transforming. The steam engine came from those excluded from Oxbridge. Of course, once in existence, the universities were quick to take up the torch. Not unlike how the universities, like IBM and the government bureaus, missed the leap the microcomputer permitted, but were quick to exploit after the revelation.

As for other great leaps outside government bureaus and the universities, look to Bessemer’s steel making process, Tesla’s ac power distribution, etc.

Individuals pursuing their own self interest, sometimes the dream of riches, sometimes just to see if it can be done. Government bureaus and universities have to justify, report and hate to bear the consequences, thus they can only be transformative by lucky accident. But, such entities can, once a new line is broached, run it out to the end by their incremental efforts. Or bring them to big projects by their forced pooling of resources.

Not unlike trade and college. Trade often knows more than college on the skill. Then college comes along “discovers” it and does the math, writes the paper, etc.

You might enjoy
Charles H. Ham, Mind and Hand: manual training, the chief factor in education (1900)
,which advocates for a school training both the mind and the hand to achieve a complete education. Lots of historical discussion of how those who make useful things with their hands have been looked down upon. We see it today in so many writing against the vocational majors and how only the useless liberal arts can give true education.

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